Monday February 28, 2011

Dublin...the government suffers a humiliating defeat here

The Fianna Fail government in Ireland appears to be well and truly dead.

Over the weekend the Irish voted in a general election, and the winners, the Fine Gael party, are calling it a "democratic revolution at the ballot box."

Fine Gael is expected to create a coalition with the Labour Party -- and form the country's record largest majority.

And when there's a big winner....there's bound to be a big loser too. Fianna Fail, which has been in power in Ireland for 90 per cent of the last quarter century, came in a humiliating third place, reduced to 17 seats.

It's widely blamed for the collapse of the Irish economy -- the so-called Celtic Tiger -- the subsequent failure of the banking system, and then a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

As a reaction to all that, Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole launched a petition for political reform called "Enough is Enough," saying about the government: "they don't mind and we don't matter. Our rulers have no shame and they believe we have no voice".

He wrote about the government's role -- and that of bankers and property developers -- in the economic collapse in his 2009 book, Ship Of Fools - How Stupidity And Corruption Sank The Celtic Tiger. Rick spoke with him about it last spring.

The top U.S. military officer says that despite an escalation in rhetoric between the United States and North Korea, he had not seen Pyongyang change its military posture. His comments come after reports that North Korea appeared to have boosted defences on its east coast.

U.S. President Donald Trump announces he will visit Puerto Rico after his administration came under criticism for its response to the damage on the island that is home to more than three million U.S. citizens.